I’m reading a wonderful book for my doctorate called Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory by Tod Bolsinger. The title comes from the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Lewis and Clark went to explore the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase. They were looking for a water route to the Pacific Ocean. They spent months out exploring. They were worn out from canoeing upstream with their team. After months of this, according to their maps, they were about to see the north west passage or at least the route to it. Finally! What had been dreamed of since the days of Columbus, a water route to the Pacific was about to be realized. Instead, what they saw were the Rocky Mountains. They weren’t equipped for this! How do you canoe the mountains?

The answer is: you don’t. You leave your canoes behind. You hike the mountains. Then you build canoes on the other side if there are rivers over there. New situations call for new strategies. It seems so obvious when we say it out loud. Sometimes you can use time-honored strategies to address problems. If there are rapids, we know how to handle that. If someone falls out of the canoe, we know what to do. If there’s a big waterfall up ahead, we know what signs to watch for and how to portage on land around the waterfall. Yet when confronted with the Rocky Mountains, those strategies aren’t going to work. You can’t canoe the mountains.

This is the difference between technical fixes and adaptive challenges.[1] Technical fixes are what we can do with our current knowledge. Our light bulb is burnt out. Okay, we just need to change the light bulb. Technical fixes are about competence and mastery of knowledge.

An adaptive challenge is beyond a fix. It’s uncharted territory. There’s no clear answer. For example, our lights are powered by a coal powered electric plant that’s spewing carbon into the atmosphere. Well, changing a lightbulb to an LED doesn’t solve the problem. Nor does putting up solar panels because our neighbors are still powered by the grid. It requires new and creative thinking. The old strategies aren’t going to help us.

This is what Lewis and Clark where facing. It’s what the church faces in the topics we covered over this worship series, abolition both then and now. Suffrage both then and now. Prohibition both then and now. And by the way… Prohibition is the perfect example of treating an adaptive problem like a technical fix. The challenge was domestic violence, violence against women and children. Banning alcohol was a technical fix to an adaptive challenge; it simply didn’t work. So it’s good to be careful before trying to ban something total, the root cause might prove to be something different altogether.

Nor would canoeing the mountains for Lewis and Clark. Lewis and Clark had to decide how to go forward, and they had to agree. President Thomas Jefferson had asked Lewis to be the leader. Lewis then wrote to Clark, his old army buddy whom he had commanded. Lewis was a captain but Clark had long been out of the military. On the books, Lewis was the sole leader, but Lewis wrote that they would function “as equals in every point of view” and to “let none of our party or any other persons know anything about the [difference in rank].”[2] To this day, we think of Lewis and Clark as a team, not as two individuals. Lewis knew his faults as a leader and needed Clark’s gifts to help him. They worked well together.

This is in contrast to what we read in Judges. “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes” is repeated twice at the end of Judges, and it’s a BAD thing. In our culture, this sounds like a great thing. Individual choice! Yes! We have freedom and liberty to do what we think is right. Yet in Judges and in the Bible, this is not a good thing. This is a very bad thing.

The culture the bible was written in is not our culture. While we are children of the Enlightenment, like Descartes saying, “I think therefore I am” the Bible’s culture would find that concept alien. They would say, “I am because others were.” They think more in communal terms. Tribal terms. Saying “they did what was right in their own eyes” is a huge slam. One we don’t hear because since then we’ve gone very, very individualistic.

Lewis and Clark knew they would have to face the Rocky Mountains together. They had a goal, and they had to agree on a single response to this obstacle along the way. This was uncharted territory for them, and they had to agree on how to navigate the adaptive challenge. They could not do “whatever they thought was right in their own eyes.” They had to be a team.

This is what’s next for the church in society in my view. Whatever we face, we have to face it together. As a community of faith. We have to have the hard conversations to respond to the issues we are facing. And we are facing a lot of issues.

Race is still an issue in America. White Supremacy is openly marching in our streets and black and brown folk are being dis-proportionally locked up. Women might have the right to vote, but their leadership is questioned in ways that I as a male don’t have to deal with and don’t always see or understand. We are facing a warming climate. We live in fear of school shootings and shootings at places of worship. We are seeing church attendance decline, as well as a decline in community organizations like the Boy Scouts, the Girls Scouts, bowling leagues, Rotary, the Masons and more.[3] How shall we respond to these adaptive challenges? Technical fixes aren’t going to do it for us.

We can start by remembering our story. We are the ancestors of pioneers! Like Lewis and Clark, our ancestors arrived not knowing what they would find. They had to build Medina! They built a cabin in a day. They laid out the square and then moved into the courthouse there for worship. Then they built the old brick church. And when that needed to be replaced, they built this house of worship. They faced the adaptive challenge of their day with faith and courage, and we are here because of their work.

We have the capacity together to face what’s next. And I don’t know what’s next. I don’t know what issue will be next for us. It’s 2019, I didn’t think we’d still have to convince people that the earth is round! I watched this documentary on Netflix called Beyond the Curve about people who believe that the earth is flat even though they disprove it to themselves twice in the documentary. It’s fascinating! I didn’t think we needed to have that conversation, I thought it was water under the bridge, but here we are. This is an example of “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” They can’t accept the truth of a round earth which even the ancients didn’t believe in. If you have ever seen a depiction of Atlas or of Caesar, they are both holding…. GLOBES.[4]

What I’m interested in is not what’s next, it’s how we face it. Can we adapt and change? Will we stop treating adaptive challenges like technical fixes? Will we talk together and figure out how to canoe the mountains?

What’s next for me is finding ways to have those conversations. I seek to unlock the wisdom in the room. To sit at the table of Christ and tell our stories and find community and together say, “Oh! I didn’t know you were interested in that! Me too! Let’s work together.” Every great ministry starts this way. It’s how you started feeding people and now, helping others do their laundry! Someone noticed a problem. Talked about it. Shared stories about it. And took action.

I think that’s the future. That’s what’s next. For the two disciples were on the road. They were feeling down about the state of the world. They met this stranger. They were inspired but they don’t see who it was… Until they broke bread at the table. They THOUGHT Emmaus was the goal. Instead, it was Jerusalem. It was bringing news that Christ is alive and risen! It is at the table they met Christ!

We shall gather at the table. It won’t be a formal table of parliamentary procedure. It’ll be a table where bread is broken. A table where stories are told that make our hearts burn within us. It’ll be the table where we will be surprised to see God in our midst. A table where we shall be gathered together, inspired, and sent to spread the good news! That’s what’s next. That’s what I’m getting a doctorate to understand how to do and then teach you how to do.

For this I know. We are stronger together than we are alone. God has built us for community. And in a time where the fabric of our communities and who we think of as neighbor are fraying, we need more table fellowship. We need more of each other. More love. And more reminding that the one that created all of this; the earth, the universe, you and me… created us not out of duty or formality or anything else but love. Amen.

Further Reading

The Art of Hosting (what my doctoral project is most likely going to be on): www.artofhosting.org

A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix by Edwin Friedman

Uproar: Calm Leadership in Anxious Times by Peter Steinke

Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading by Marty Linsky, Ronald A. Heifetz

The pastor is the church’s principal convener by Cameron Barr, https://www.faithandleadership.com/cameron-barr-pastor-churchs-principal-convener?utm_source=FL_newsletter&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=FL_feature

Works Cited

[1] The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World Alexander Grashow and Ronald Heifetz

[2] Canoeing the Mountains, page 62

[3] Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam

[4] For more on why the “flat earth” is a myth and other inaccurate stories about science (like why Galileo wasn’t persecuted) please read Saving Darwin by Karl Giberson